BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
